Sunday, February 11, 2007

Disney's Homeland security

When we entered the Magic Kingdom on the first day of our trip, I was alarmed to see that they were using biometrics with finger scanning along with the ticket cards. Since I had gotten 10-day no expiration passes for use on another trip, this was going to foil my plan. I had three 10-day adult (age 10+) passes and one 8-day child (age 3-9) pass. Luckily for us, Dova was three weeks from turning 3 on this trip so she was free. My plan was to come back on the next trip for 5 days, after Adam was 10, where he could use Grandma's pass and Dova would use Adam's pass. Suddenly, my plan was foiled and we had to come back before Adam turned 10 to be able to use up his pass. Then we started our own biometric tests. First Grandma and I switched cards and we were admitted fine. Grandma's finger obviously has a different fingerprint was definitely wider than mine, if they were only going by dimensions. Later, Doug I and swapped cards and we flew through again. So this biometric scan is just a crock and a scare tactic to prevent transferring cards. But the next day, with everyone using their own cards, I got rejected the first time because I used my left finger at an angle. Using my right finger was fine. At the same time, Grandma's card got rejected several times and they let her through only after she signed the back of her card. She later used her card at another park without issue. So what happened there is still a bit of a mystery. In the end, I think we will bring everyone including Grandma back before Adam turns 10, so we'll all be using the same tickets and will have to get another one for Dova. They definitely have their money sucking machine working well!

2/12/07 Update - I got this information from a friend of a friend:

I had asked one of my cast member contacts about that and she had told me that they weren’t reading your fingerprint but rather the dimensions of your finger tip. Which undoubtedly has to have some variability built into it to compensate everything from swelling to weight gain. I would think the older versions of passes with your photo on it would be more secure. I like seeing myself ha ha.

To which I respond, there is no way that Doug and I could possibly have the same dimensional fingerprint. See for yourself: